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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-fakes-another-video-hamas-rockets-next-gaza-homes">electronicintifada.net</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel fakes another video of "Hamas rockets" next to Gaza homes</h1>
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<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali Abunimah</a></span> <span class="gmail-field gmail-field-blog">-</span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">17 May 2021</span></span> </p>
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<span><img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2021-05/screen_shot_2021-05-17_at_8.16.35_am.png?itok=ZEQbNnpz×tamp=1621271744" alt="Screenshot of tweet" title="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="476" height="404"></span><p>The
Israeli military tweeted a video containing footage it falsely claimed
showed Hamas rockets near civilian homes in Gaza. The tweet was later
deleted.</p><p>Israel always claims to do
everything possible to avoid civilian casualties when it is bombing
Gaza, as it has been doing with savage intensity for more than a week.</p>
<p>Yet day after day, Israel has slaughtered men, women and children in their homes, regularly <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-kills-children-doctors-horrific-nighttime-massacre">wiping out whole families</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://twitter.com/press221/status/1394251414713602048">200 people killed in Gaza</a> since the Israeli attack began more than a week ago include 59 children and 35 women.</p>
<p>So the dilemma for Israel is how to square this horrific reality with its propaganda about protecting civilians.</p>
<p>The solution is to lie and blame the victims.</p>
<p>Israel’s habitual claim is that Hamas and other Palestinian
resistance organizations use Palestinian civilians as “human shields,”
by routinely firing rockets from residential areas, or even the rooftops
of homes.</p>
<p>Israel got caught lying again after it posted a video on Twitter on Saturday titled “Hamas’ Use of Human Shields, Explained.”</p>
<p>The tweet also says: “Israel fights to protect its civilians. Hamas uses civilians to protect itself.”</p>
<h2>Old video, fake rockets</h2>
<p>But as Raphael Satter, a Reuters journalist observed, the video
included “footage of a 2018 Israeli training exercise presented as if it
had been shot recently in Gaza.”
</p>
The footage appears to show a truck carrying missiles near homes through a narrow residential street.
<p>But as Aric Toler, a researcher with <a href="https://www.bellingcat.com/about/">Western-government funded think tank</a>
Bellingcat observed, the truck with the missiles appears to have been a
decoy being used as part of an Israeli training exercise.</p>
<p>And it was not filmed in Gaza.</p>
<p>The image is taken from a video filmed more than two years ago in the village of <a href="https://twitter.com/TaylorPBrooks/status/1392540668346703877">Abu Snan</a> in the Galilee – about as far as you can get from Gaza within Israel.
</p>
Cropped footage of the trucks from the 2018 video was used in the now-deleted Israeli army video posted on Saturday.
<p>The Electronic Intifada was able to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210516020715/https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1393747225881231360">view the video in an archived copy in the WayBack Machine</a>.</p>
<p>The 2018 video was <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MivzakLive/posts/2020853144641924">posted on an Israeli Facebook page</a> on 25 November 2018.</p>
<p>A caption in Hebrew says, “Trucks with ‘missiles’ took a wrong turn and entered the village of Abu Snan in the north.”</p>
<p>A voice on the video, that of the Arabic-speaking child who
apparently filmed it, calls out, “Look guys, the rockets are here.” He
sounds excited by the unusual scene.</p>
<p>The visibility of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Israel&oldid=1022390391">yellow Israeli license plates</a> on parked cars is another clear giveaway that the video was not shot in Gaza.</p>
<p>Israel’s <em>Mako</em> news website <a href="https://www.mako.co.il/news-israel/local-q4_2018/Article-159acf3fea64761004.htm">reported</a>
on 24 November 2018 how Israeli motorists had been surprised to see a
truck apparently carrying missiles on a highway near the central Israeli
town of Kiryat Gat, heading towards the north.</p>
<p>The report includes a video apparently filmed by an Israeli motorist
showing the same sort of decoy truck visible in the Facebook video.</p>
<p>With its lie busted, the Israeli army <a href="https://twitter.com/razhael/status/1393916332308148226">deleted</a> its tweet, though an <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210516020715/https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1393747225881231360">archived copy</a> remains online.</p>
<p>Although the video may not play in the archived version for some
readers, it had apparently garnered 146,000 views before the Israeli
army deleted it.
</p>
<h2>Lies and fabrications</h2>
<p>This latest fabrication is not Israel’s first during its current attack on Gaza.</p>
<p>Last week, Ofir Gendelman, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-posts-fake-videos-justify-gaza-slaughter">posted a video on Twitter</a> claiming to show Hamas firing rockets from next to an apartment building in Gaza.</p>
<p>But Gendelman deleted the tweet after Twitter labeled it “manipulated
media.” It had in fact been a video filmed in Syria and first posted on
YouTube in 2018.</p>
<p>Also last week on CGTN television, I <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/blowing-apart-monstrous-israeli-lie">debunked the lie</a> told by a member of Israel’s far-right Yamina party that Hamas was firing rockets from the roofs of residential buildings:
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